Motorbikes - what do you ride?

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My twin brother is travelling over 400kms in a Tesla Model 3 on Saturday morning with a friend so the friend of ours can buy a used Triumph Thruxton and my brother can ride it home for him same day. There's pretty bad wildfire smoke in the area limiting visibility and I read a ride report on Facebook from a guy that just rode down from that area that he had to use eyedrops and wear a mask/filter and keep his speed down to make it. Hoooooping their trip goes well without any issues! Also, as much as breathing all that crap isn't gonna be good for anyone... riding through areas with apocalyptic backdrops Would be pretty badass..

Hadn't ridden my bike for a week since it was acting up.. had a friend come over and adjust the clutch to ~perfection.. nope, that didn't solve the problem. Rode it for an hour last night to rip out to another suburb city & back on a mission to deliver a bottle of whiskey. Clutch seems to be working just fine, no problems holding in 1, 3, 4, 5 just like my last ride out when I was doing 140kmh in 5th gear. (Although I kept it to 120 last night.) Anyways, same mechanical clicky problem and disengaging in 2nd gear :/ soooo, that tells me 2nd gear is pooched. Maybe it's stripped? Or something's wrong with the shifting fork and it can't get it fully engaged? Something's fucky, anyways. Solution for now = skip 2nd gear as much as possible! Then maybe I'll have the transmission rebuilt in the Winter time when I don't mind it being off the road. I suppose I'll have to decide if I should just buck up and pay the experts, or buy a motorcycle stand and tools and parts and attempt it myself... I mean, it can't be rocket surgery stuff... buuuuut, with zero experience it could take a long time to do considering I'd have to take pics and vids and consult the oracle that is the great googley moogley to figure out which parts are worn our and need replacing if it's not obvious etc etc.. and then, even if I did it perfectly, it would come with zero warranty. Hmm; might just be worth the $1500 to pay a shop to do it. That's for future me to decide, I guess.

Managed to almost completely avoid 2nd gear on my ride - mostly highway, but some city red lights. I wonder how crappy it might be not having 2nd gear doing all city riding/rush hour.. hmm. Basically, I wonder how long I can get away with riding w/o paying to repair it. I guess it's gonna take a few rides to find out.

seems to me that a missing 2nd gear would not be as bothersome as a missing top gear, at least to somebody who rides at freeway speeds often.

Exactly. The couple rides I made in the last couple evenings went fine - I did switch into 2nd gear temporarily a few times.. it does work, just not consistently or for very long at all. Then I made an effort to just bypass it and just skip into 3rd with a double shift. No big deal on flats/downhill, not quite sure how well that might work out on a steep hill start... might have to avoid those and take a detour, or rev high in 1st, double shift and rev high to transition to 3rd. Hmm - time will tell how well I can manage without 2nd gear!

City riding isn't so bad at all going 1st to 3rd - it's only potentially on steep hill starts that 2nd Might be more necessary. For now I'll just skip 2nd and carry on - it's typically only near home or a destination that I'm doing stops and starts anyways, all highway in between so whatever who cares the clutch holds strong even at 140kmh. (I've yet to go faster, but the bike is supposed to have an upper limit of 205kmh. Also, there are no speed limits anywhere near that fast so obviously the 140kmh rides were on closed race track courses. )

I'm fairly confident I can ride out the rest of the season w/o 2nd gear and then decide whether a friend or two and I want to put weekends into rebuilding things - first learning how and then doing - OR if I'll just buck up and pay a shop to do whatever work is needing done. It's not that I can't afford it, it's just difficult to justify paying nearly half the value of the bike for a single repair.. but, if it is all about financial math, the bike isn't worth it's full value without repair sooo maybe worth doing anyways despite the cost. I DO quite like the bike.

Also, my car insurance just went down by $50/mo or so under our new pricing structure - basically people were getting pissed off having the highest rates anywhere and the gov't in power realized they'd have to lower rates or risk political suicide. We only have one insurance company, a government monopoly, and the government steals from it every year as a general revenue tax slush fund and people are PISSED. So, there's some savings that could go towards repairs etc. And if I finally get around to applying for collector plates and get those approved, I'll save another $50/mo off of motorcycle insurance. Plus if I were strapped for cash there's limitless demand for my trade if I want to work around the clock (covid safe) and make more money to pay for things.

On my old Triumph Bonneville, when I was in a hurry I'd be changing from 2nd to 3rd at about 50 to 75 mph. (It's been a while so I don't remember precisely what speed I'd shift gears at.) I'd use top gear, but didn't really need it at highway speeds.

didn't top gear make an audible difference in rpms/smoothness?

In the 55 mph speed limits back then, top gear felt somewhat bogged down.

I remember one day in the mid 1980s when I was living in a major city a large storm was approaching and I was trying to get home ahead of the storm. Out on the highways, I was running about 80 to 90 in the 55 mph national speed limit, but when I got to a small town, I'd slow down and carefully stay within the speed limit.

I passed a car of what appeared to be young college kids pretty easily on the highway about two miles outside of one small town. When I got into town, I was going along at 30 or so and they went flying past me, celebrating like they had just won a race. I stopped for a quick stop to top off my gas which didn't take very long at all. Then I got back on my way and sure enough I saw the same car that had flown past me a few minutes earlier stopped by the city police on the edge of town.

i would do away with speed limits and replace that with license revocation if an accident one caused was provably caused by speeding.

I don't ride a motorbike per say. If I had the balance and proper reflex time for driving, I'd be riding a 1964 Vespa scooter.

i would really love a honda helix, a red one, like my dad drove.

Could have had it in a shop a month or so earlier but was busy/distracted. In the shop now waiting for parts to rebuild the transmission. 2nd gear I knew was gone, but apparently so is the shifting fork for that gear And also 4th gear is damaged because 2nd and 4th mesh together or something ? Very highly doubtful the damage occurred during my ownership as I wasn't particularly harsh on it or anything - probably an issue that began with the original owner and then it just gave up recently. Ah well, is what it is, hopefully parts can be shipped and repairs done sooooon so I can still ride it during nice weather this year.